28 Oct 2021

NZ Screen History: Tux Wonder Dogs

From Afternoons, 2:25 pm on 28 October 2021

Tux Wonder Dogs used to apparently beat Oprah and Mr. Bean in the ratings on Saturday nights at 7pm.

Its star was the golden Labrador, Dexter, and RNZ's own Jim Mora provided the witty commentary.

Created by TV power couple presenter Mark Leishman and producer Jo Raymond, it was wholesome entertainment for the entire family. 

Leishman tells Jesse Mulligan he finds it charming that people in their 20s and 30s still remember the show and come up to him on the street.

"It appealed to kids and to adults for different reasons, a lot to do with Jim Mora's commentary which was very clever, and the adults got the in-jokes and loved that," he says.

"Even to this day on the news, you get to the end of the program on a Sunday night and you get a dog story or something, people just seem to love watching dogs."

Mora was pivotal in the entertainment because he was able to get "inside the dog's mind", Leishman says.

"We used to edit the program together and then I would give Jim a VHS tape of it and he would take that home and put it in his machine and sit there and he had all the information that he gathered about each individual.

"He would write in long hand, he would even put pauses and even little coughs and things because the aim was to make it sound like it was live, that it was coming to you directly as you're seeing it."

The show started in 1993 off the back of A Dog's Show, which ended in 1992, with the focus this time being on townie dogs instead of rural ones, Raymond says.

"All the dogs were all members of clubs generally, agility clubs around New Zealand and obedience clubs and so they had to be of a certain standard," she says.

"We could have had a show full of like border collies or kelpies because they were so smart, but that would have been a bit same. So we had to really spread the types of dogs and breeds.

"We didn't always choose the best dogs either. We designed it so they were good dogs and not so good dogs so that we kept the humor up and it was funny."

There were three tasks the dogs had to complete, including agility where they had to jump over things, obedience where they had to retrieve items and then swimming.

But importantly, it was about handlers and owners celebrating their dogs, not laughing at them, Raymond says.

"They're the type of people that were always about promoting their dogs rather than themselves. So the dogs were the stars, not the people. And no matter where we would set them up, what game you would ask them to do, what I'd suggest that they do, they always went along with it," she says.

"It became a bit of a badge of honour, to get on the program was something kind of special," Leishman says.

"They were the easiest people to work with, they didn't care about having to stay in flash hotels, they were happy, they wanted to stay near their dogs so they'd be in their camper vans or in their tents, and the dogs would be there with them."

They also listened to feedback from the clubs and worked with them on game ideas, the couple say.

"We at the time didn't realise in the mid '90s that a lot of dogs are actually allergic to chocolate and it can be quite serious," Leishman says.

"And one of our obedience exercises was they had to retrieve a block of Cadbury's chocolate and of course as soon as we set that up, the people said no, no, no, you can't do that. We had them with French baguettes, we had them with sausages, they did that all right. Most of them ate them."

But the big star of the show was Dexter and Leishman was more like the co-host, Raymond says.

"[Dexter] was a huge guy, about 47kg which is quite big for a lab ... and towards the end when he got quite old, we actually bought him a lazy boy chair and in the latter episodes, he would actually sit like king on the throne on his lazy boy, kids would surround him," Leishman says.

"It was the second story on the news when he died. Then the guide dog organisation had a huge sort of funeral and family fun day and hundreds of people came," Raymond says.

"There were speeches and the police dogs did a display and the search and rescue dogs were there. It was very special. Hundreds, hundreds, thousands of people came along, and it was all for old Dexter," Leishman says.

After 10 years and 105 episodes, the show ended.

"It was a very short, sharp, brutal meeting and then they sort of stood against the desk and said, oh, you know I think we've had enough of the dogs," Raymond says.